Putting the Scale Away... Further Away

I had been toying with the idea of doing a full month sans scale for a little while, but naturally it was one of those things that I liked to talk about without ever actually doing anything about it.  Story of my life, people.  I finally posted about it on the WW message boards last week and was happy to see several others up for the challenge.  And therefore, here I am in the midst of a scale-free month.

I made this decision last Thursday and my last scale-check was last Wednesday for WI.  I initially felt cheated to have made this decision on a whim without sneaking in one last peek before beginning the scale-fast, a “last supper” of weighing if you will.  Then I realized that the very fact that I was scheming in this way and was hesitant about dipping into the no-scale thing cold turkey was all the proof I needed that a month without the scale would do my crazy ass some good.

This is a picture of the scale I use.  It's not my actual scale, nor do I weigh 0.0 pounds, tragically,  This picture really does not add anything to this post other than to be like, yeah, this is a scale.  And to give myself something to lust over.  Scale porn.

I don’t have any major reason in particular for this, but I think it will be beneficial mentally AND I think I just want to prove to myself that I can do it.  The thing with WI-frequency is that it’s kind of like borderline-alcoholism.  You keep saying you don’t NEED it and you’re not obsessed or addicted to it, and yet you still keep doing it, all the time.  I don’t think I’m particularly scale-obsessed, compared to many others at least, and I’m not a daily weigher.  But I need to do it to remind myself that I CAN.  And I am also perpetually jealous of the seemingly “naturally” healthy people that maintain healthy habits and a healthy weight without having to micromanage their diet, workout routine and check the scale on the reg.  I know it’s not that easy but I want to work my way in that direction.

I’m pretty much positive that my willpower-lacking ass could not survive once-monthly weighing every month.  But if it goes OK and I find that I don’t need the scale to keep me motivated and working hard, maybe it is something I can do a few times a year.  Or maybe I’ll find myself totally unraveling and binging on cans of chocolate frosting by the end of the week, who knows.  I do know that it has been years and years since I’ve gone a full month without checking the scale, so if for no other reason than wanting to do it again for the first time in forever, it seems like something to strive for.  I’d love to be down a little bit when I weigh myself again on September 12 (a full 5 weeks) but I think I’ll feel pretty awesome just to do it at all, no matter the result.

Unless, of course, I end up gaining 15 pounds, in which case I’ll whine like a little bitch and weigh myself 14 times a day for the rest of eternity.

Random Shit

I really wish that some doctor would magically come up with some Atkins-like revolution in which it turns out that eating crazy combinations of carbs in massive quantities actually can accelerate weight loss.  Atkins was a nice, albeit insane and generally unsustainable, diet option for those meat-fiends out there and while I love me some steak and cheeseburgers, bread and its spawn have always been my one true love.

Anyway, I realize that I might as well also wish for world peace and a lifetime supply of grilled cheeses to be delivered to my door tomorrow since these events are about as likely.  But a gal can dream, can’t she?  I just don’t see the value of being content with learning how to eat like a normal healthy person when I could hope for miracles. 

I started typing this post circa one week ago and then never finished and here I am finally getting around to it again.  I don’t really have anything new to add.  I lost 0.8 last week which was shockingly awesome after the wedding weekend, and then gained 1.8 this past week after my birthday shenanarama which I was cool with because it seems like a friendly birthday gain.  I’ve been good with working out so far this week which is to say I’ve actually gone the last two days even if there was very little good about it.  The gym is still a giant asshole in my book but we maintain a mutual tolerance for one another.

Not much else cookin in my world.  It seems like I’ve got shit going on every weekend in August which is annoying and counterproductive to my perpetual desire to spend all weekend laying on the couch watching TV, but I’ll get through it I suppose.  I’m not banking on losing anymore before September but if I can drop another 0.8 below my lowest and hit -110 that’d be snazzy.  Still, I’ve scraped off about 6 pounds this summer and that is a fine enough seasonal total for me. 

This blog needs more pictures.

Several more weeks and still at the same weight.  It could be worse- I could be gaining or flying off track or otherwise, but after finally making some forward progress in May and June I’m stuck in place again.  I’ve actually only been in the red once in the past 5 weeks but have only lost a half pound in that time.  However, I haven’t been fantastic either and this past week I used all of my WPs and dipped into a few APs, which usually yields mixed results.  Nevertheless, after maintaining this week I still glared at the scale hoping for magic to happen. 

The one nice thing about plateauing a bit after losing several pounds is that you get to enjoy the delayed loss of inches and clothes fitting better which I find usually doesn’t show up until a few weeks after the scale goes down (and if I’m continually losing, I don’t notice).  I’m squarely in between-sizes territory now in that the smaller size is still a bit on the tight side but the larger size is noticeably too baggy.  It’s an annoyingly awful limbo area where I don’t feel fabulous in anything exactly, but it’s nice to know that I can fit into the smaller stuff without it looking obscene either.  If only I could just push myself 3 more pounds or so I’d be in a very happy place. 

I have been upping my running just a tad lately.  I’m far too lazy and lack the attention span to really do anything major or ambitious, but I’ve done a couple 4ish mile runs in the past two weeks and kept it at a 10 minute pace, so it hasn’t been too painfully eternal-seeming.  I’ve also been keeping my shorter runs at 30 minutes or longer and trying to up my speed with those, so I think I can commit to my pledge to never spend an exorbitant amount of time running but get a decent workout, in which case I might actually stick with it a little longer.  

I’m going to Bar Harbor for a wedding this weekend so I will be out of town Thursday night to Monday morning and I know I will not be a model of Weight Watchers during that time, which is part of why I’m frustrated not to have lost this past week.  Nevertheless, I’ll try to work out and make decently non-shitty eating decisions and hopefully avoid getting black-out drunk, and I can keep the damage manageable.  It will be awesome to see my law school friends all in one spot and I think the wedding will be a great time, so at the end of the day I’ll have a great time regardless of WW or points.

This and That

Well what do you know, I almost let another week slip by without updating.  I like doing it, too, and I’ve started to about 47 times this week.  But yeah.  Lazy.  Etc. 

I lost 0.4 at WI which is unspectacular but since I’ve been going down pretty steadily, albeit slowly, over the past 6ish weeks, I’ve been surprisingly happy just to see new numbers of any kind.  I went out for Mexican last Friday and had obscene quantities of truffle oil guac and nachos and 4ish Dos Equis Ambers and my new favorite, a michelada which is a Bloody-Mary-type situation that has Dos Equis Amber in it and was quite delicious.  And I had Oreo pancakes for brunch on Sunday.  At this point I’m really just laying out the foundation for an actual food-porn, complete with me bathing myself in a tub of cheese whiz, so I’ll put it to rest.  But yum.  And I had 2 WPs left and did a full slate of workouts.  So 0.4 was good enough for me.

What else?  It’s Friday afternoon and clearly I’m work-minded at the moment.  I’m going to the Phillies game in a bit where I will be having crab fries for dinner, a well-balanced meal if ever there was one.  I’m doing a Color Run on Sunday which starts early as shit but I’m trying to cut down on the quantity of bitching I do because it seems to be a lot lately.  I don’t think it’s going to be a fantastic weekend in the WW sphere of life, but as usual if I can keep things relatively under control and I eat somewhere short of 99 million calories, it’s all good.

Slow and whiney

Oh right.  The blog.  I was going to update last week, but genuinely got busy.  But I also was probably annoyed that I maintained at WI even though I had a really unusually awesome WW-week, so I got all pissy and curled up into a ball and whined about it instead of blogging.

I lost 1 pound this week, which is really only 1 pound in the last 2 weeks, which is whiney and complainy and all that, but it’s tough to have 2 solid weeks of staying with my weekly points and *only* average half a pound.  But really, it’s a loss and I’m going in the right direction and in my enormous amount of time spent on WW, I can say I have absolute faith in the program in that I get what I put into it.  It doesn’t always show up on the scale that week, but it shows up somehow, sometime.  My clothes are looser, I feel great, I’m making healthy food choices, and I know I’m doing what I need to do.  So that’s enough for me for now.

You know what is friggen ridiculous?  I went back through my tracker and I have tracked every day since I went to Chicago May 15-18, AND I haven’t gone into the red at all since then.  And I’ve worked out and eaten pretty healthily and all that other good stuff.  I haven’t been perfect – I’ve dipped into my activity points a couple times (which I use after my weeklies and for me often means a gain/maintain) – but I’ve been pretty OK.  I’m not sure why I’ve been more motivated lately, but I’m down 6 pounds in that span.  It’s not crazy-fast, but it’s still coming off.

This shit is happening

I got a new bathing suit recently since it had been a couple of years since my last one and I needed something new to wear in front of no one while laying out on my roof deck acquiring skin cancer.  Anyway, I mostly like it although like any bathing suit, it's quick to point out areas needing improvement.  Accordingly, I decided to be bold and post some bathing suit pics.  Except that it's a tankini and I'm wearing shorts because my thighs are not getting that kind of press, so it's really not exactly the bold move I'd like to pretend.  Even still, it's a nice picture to use in comparison to my older heavier pictures and to feel good about what I've done, but also a reminder that I still have more work to do.

I look awfully smiley for some reason.

Yes, I'm sucking in a smidge. Shut up.

107

Isn’t it funny how I start blogging on the reg once I have a good stretch on the scale? Be warned that this also means I’ll be disappearing shortly once things start to turn to shit again. I shouldn’t say that. It’s not shit. I’ve been very fortunate to have done WW for 175 weeks now (I just randomly decided to calculate that because I’m bored) without having any bad chunks of time, or gains of more than a few pounds. If plateauing, losing slowly, and yoyo-ing a couple pounds are as bad as it gets despite my somewhat recurrent laziness and screwing around with the plan, I have nothing to complain about.

I lost 2.8 this week, which is 5 pounds down in the past 4 weeks, and 107 down total. I realized I hit the 100 mark back in October so it’s been awhile since I got to see a colorful 5-pound star bouncing across my tracker, but it was greatly appreciated. I’m really surprised they haven’t done a reality show about me, because there’s very little as mind-blowingly exciting as watching someone lose weight at an average rate of 0.6 pounds a week for 3 years and 4+ months. Can you imagine if I knew that’s how long this crap would take when I signed up? I’d have just cut off a couple limbs instead and called it a day. But life would have gone on whether or not I was doing WW, so I might as well be losing – however slowly – than gaining over that stretch, as I was for the 7 preceding years.

Even though goal is still 15-30 pounds away (depending on the day), I’ve had my eye on the -114 mark forever since that’s my 18-year old weight and lowest of my adult life. SEVEN MORE POUNDS. I wasn’t totally satisfied then and I’m not totally satisfied now, but I’m at a point where I’m pretty cool with my body. I enjoy more of it than I abhor, and I’m not hateful towards even my least pleasant body parts. I’m on the edge of being content. After gaining as much weight as I did and spending the past three-plus years losing it and still feeling like I had so far to go, I finally feel like I’m close. Close isn’t there but it’s not an awful place to be, especially considering where I was a few years ago.

I’m not happy that I gained the weight, but it’s done wonders for my perspective. I’m exponentially happier at my current weight than I was the last time I was here, because I know how much worse it could be. And the fact that I’m the world’s slowest loser has helped me avoid taking any loss for granted. And I’m sure it has helped me keep going and keep off what I’ve lost. 107 pounds in 175 weeks has been a very good experience.

May 2008  /  June 2012